


Hands Into the Fire

by hylander



Category: Hit the Floor (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, basically everyone (hit the floor)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-15 01:50:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13603044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hylander/pseuds/hylander
Summary: "Remember this moment, because right now, life is perfect. And then, like a car crash, it happens". - S. Kinsella.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> hi guys! english is still not my first language, so, forgive me for any mistake. Feedbacks are always welcomed!

**Then, December 31st 2016, 5pm**  
  
“Hi Jude, it’s Laura.”

Jude tucked his phone between his shoulder and his left ear, his eyes instinctively meeting with the clock in the corner of his laptop.

“Hello Laura. Are the two of you having a good time?”  
  
Zero had swung by his office in the beginning of the afternoon to remind him he had to fetch his sister from LAX, and that the two of them had planned to spend the rest of the day together before the Devils’ event that was supposed to take place later in the night to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Jude had welcomed the idea with relief, if he had to be honest. Zero wasn’t admitting that he spent so much time working, even during meaningful days of the year, and if he had to be on his own until the night, he would be pissed.  
  
But what was he supposed to do? Drop everything in the middle of the day? It wasn’t like the 31st of December was anywhere as important as Christmas. So the idea of Zero busy with his sister seemed to be a good compromise; Jude got to work without feeling guilty, and Zero got someone to spend the day with.  
  
“Uh, not really, actually. I haven’t seen him yet, my flight was late, I just landed. I can’t reach him, I always end up on his voicemail.”  
  
Jude frowned and put the papers he had been flicking through back on his desk. “Perhaps he’s just off network?”  
  
It was now 5pm. If he was remembering correctly, Zero had left his office around 1pm, which meant he had been on his own for about four hours. Four hours in the course of which he had sent no text, no picture, no call, even though he was clearly waiting for Laura and had literally nothing else to do. Jude just assumed that they were together, but now that he knew it wasn’t the case, it surely meant that Zero had been unable to reach him. It was weird, though, because he could clearly remember several times where Zero had called him from the airport.  
  
“Look, I’m gonna try to get in touch with him, take a taxi and go to his place.”

Jude hang up before dialing Zero’s number, but just as Laura said, the call went to the voicemail right away. He then dialed the number of the person in charge of the Devils Jet at the airport.

“Hello Larry. Can you do me a favor?” he asked without much preamble.

“Sure, Mr. Kinkade. Does anybody needs the jet today?”

“No, not exactly. I know it’s none of your attributions but I’d like it to remain discreet”, he said with a business tone, fully aware that even though it wasn’t that much of a secret, it still impressed people whenever they felt like they were part of something important.

“Could you ask the security to check on the parking lot? There must be a red Porsche parked somewhere, I just want to make sure it’s still there.”

Larry didn’t bother asking anything else, and Jude couldn’t be more grateful. He gave him the license plate of Zero’s car and then waited while Larry was proceeding. It took several minutes, and Jude let his fingers drum on the border of his desk in the meantime.

“Mr. Kinkade? I just hang up with the head of the security. There’s no red Porsche parked anywhere.”

Jude felt a strange taste on his tongue.

“Do you want them to check on the security cameras?” Larry asked, helpful.

“No, thank you Larry. Sorry for the bother.”

“It’s never a bother, Mr. Kinkade.”

 

* * *

 

  **Then, **December 31st 2016** , 7pm**

  
“Why can’t we just go to the Police?”

“Because that’s not how we do things in our world.”

“Your world? _Really?_ And how do we do things in your stupid, fake world?”

“We don't run to the Police Station every single time someone is missing family dinner, to begin with! It’s called thinking ahead, Laura. Something you better be accustomed to if you plan on staying around.”

“So what, you’re just going to wait and do nothing?”

“What do you want us to do?! He’s been gone an afternoon!”

“An afternoon he was supposed to be spending with me.”

“Maybe he got a call from a sponsor.”

“His agent said that nothing came up! Nothing explains the radio silence.”

“Don't look at me like that, I’m not the one who’s supposed to know him best.”

“Then what are you even doing here?”

“I’m here for Jude. Because as always, he’s the one who ends up all twisted up.”

“Stop it! Both of you!” Jude shouted.

The two women startled and glanced at him. They were facing each other from across the glass coffee table, Laura pacing back and forth, while Lionel was graciously sitting in an armchair by the purely decorative fireplace. Jude stood up from the couch.

“Don’t you think I’ve got enough to think about right now, without having to fucking deal with you two on top of everything else?!”

He had never truly figured out why Lionel and Laura had never been keen on each other. Jude suspected that his ex-stepmom was afraid that adding any more 'Zero' in his life would make everything fall apart. He couldn’t blame her, and if pressed, he would maybe admit that it felt good to have someone standing up for him. But it was getting out of hand, and right now, he couldn’t care less about their stupid babbling. They had been arguing for at least _an hour_.

Lionel opened her mouth but Jude cut her before she could speak a word.

“Whatever he’s doing, wherever he is, it’s not going to be unnoticed if neither of us go to that stupid party!”

He didn’t want to have to think about it, because it was about Zero more than the party. But then there was Jelena. Jelena, who had been working on this event for two months now. Jelena, who had been literally chaining him to this office, day and night, to make sure everything would be perfect. It was the first high-scale event she was setting up since she took over the Kingdom and she had been insisting over and over again on how it was important for every single one of them. Not only to show up, but to behave. She would slit his throat open with her bare teeth if he wasn’t attending. But what would happen if he was attending without Zero? She had made herself pretty clear about investing in them. Jude hated the thought of selling himself and his relationship with a man he truly loved just for the sake of the press, but they had been through a rollercoaster of emotions after Jelena’s latest attempt to get rid of Zero, and decided that participating into the Zude circus could only be for the best - and, he hoped, not for long.

“So what, the world isn’t going to stop turning round, it’s just a party”, Laura said, obviously missing the seriousness of Jude’s dilemma.

“It’s not just a party”, Lionel sighed, rubbing her forehead as if she was explaining some philosophical thought to a child. “It’s Jelena’s big party, her coronation day. The one she can’t fail. Without her top dog, she’s already failing half the test.”

Jude walked towards the bay-windows of the living room and just stared at the outside, tucking his hands in his pants’ pockets. _Fuck it, Gideon. What are you doing?!_ , he couldn’t help but think.

 

* * *

  
**Then, New Year’s Eve 2016**

 **Laura. 5.04 PM.** “Gideon, it’s me. I don’t know where you are, I can’t find your car.”

 **Laura. 5.15 PM.** “Gid, it’s still me. I’m sorry, my flight was late. Just tell me if something came up, I can take a cab.”

 **Jude. 5.18 PM.** _Missed call._

 **Jude. 5.23 PM.** “Hey, babe, it’s me. Where are you? Laura couldn’t find you, so I just told her to come home. Call me back, okay?”

 **Jude. 5.44 PM.** “It’s me again. Call me back when you have this. I’m getting a little bit worried here.”

 **Jude. 6.07 PM.** _Missed call_.

 **Jude. 6.23 PM.** “Gideon, where the hell are you? Come home we’ve got to go to the party!!”

 **Jude. 6.31 PM.** _Missed call._

 **Matt. 06.39 PM.** “Zero, where the hell are you?”

 **Lionel. 7.10 PM.** “Look, I don’t care what you’re doing or even who you’re doing, but just come home already!”

 **Jude. 7.13 PM.** _Missed call._

 ******Jude. 7.41 PM.** _Missed call._

 **Jude. 7.57 PM.** _Missed call._

 **Laura. 8.36 PM.** _Missed call._

 **Laura. 8.45 PM.** _Missed call._

 **Jude. 8.49 PM.** _Missed call._

 **Jude. 9.04 PM.** _Missed call._

 **Jude. 9.21 PM.** "I have to go to the Playground. I don't know what you're doing but  _please_ , just drop it and just  _join me there_."

 **Jelena. 9.33 PM.** “I’m hoping really hard you’re heading to  _Antarctic_  because that’s where I plan on sending you as soon as your bleach blond ass comes back.”

 **Jude. 10.06 PM.** _Missed call._

 **Matt. 10.31 PM.** _Missed call._

 **Jelena. 11.01 PM.** _Missed call._

 **** **Jelena. 11.34 PM.**   _Missed call._

 **Jude. 00.05 AM.** "Gideon, I'm worried _sick._ Fucking call me back."

 **Matt. 01.04 AM.** _Missed call._

 **Jude. 1.23 AM.** _Missed call._

 **Matt. 01.34 AM.** _Missed call._

 **Pete. 5.11 AM.** _Missed call._

 **Matt. 7.52 AM.** _Missed call._

 

* * *

 

**Then, January **1st 2017** , 4am**

Ahsha woke up to the distant sound of a conversation. She frowned as she looked up to the alarm clock on her nightstand. It was barely past four in the morning. Derek was still asleep next to her, and she considered going back to sleep herself for a second. But the conversation coming from downstairs didn’t seem to weaken. There were more shuffles and more whispers, and she could spot a ray of light from under the closed door of the room that had recently been dedicated to her (and Derek), in Pete’s new house.

The newlyweds had come back from Miami over a week ago to spend Christmas along with her parents. Derek was frankly reluctant at first, not familiar with the concept of family reunions, but he eventually gave in, for the sake of Ahsha, and Christmas felt a lot more comfortable than they all expected at first. No, in the end, Ahsha had to insist a lot more to convince Derek to make an appearance to the New Year’s Eve event organized by the Devils Nation, and thus to postpone their return to Miami. That was all Kyle’s idea, but Ahsha would have lied if she said she wasn’t willing to enjoy an evening with the people she knew from the Arena, now that Jelena’s bullets could no longer reach her.

What could all this fuss be possibly about? That wasn’t like she could picture her parents going to some sort of after-after-party at four in the morning on New Year’s Eve. She eventually slipped out of Derek’s arms and stepped out of the bedroom, protecting her eyes from the light in the stairs. Her parents were standing in the main entrance of the house, in a deep conversation. Her mom was wrapped in a robe, but her father was already fully clothed and was putting on a leather jacket.

“Mom? What’s going on?”

They both startled as they spotted her halfway down the stairs. Before her mom could reply, Pete’s phone buzzed in his hand and he picked up.

“I’m on my way, Lionel. Yeh. I’m sure it’s fine, relax”, he mumbled.

Ahsha was now fully awake and far from being serene. Obviously something was happening. Why would Lionel be calling otherwise? Besides, their conversation didn’t give her the feeling that it was the first one they had in the night.

She frowned. “Is everything okay?”

Her mom turned towards her.

“We don’t know yet, Ahsha. You should probably go back to sleep”.

Ahsha couldn’t help but glare at her mom with a ‘don’t treat me like a child’ look, turning to Pete instead when he hang up.

“Dad, what’s going on?”

Pete looked up at her.

“Uh, apparently, Zero had gone missing since last afternoon and he still hasn’t showed up. They’re all starting to freak out, I should probably go”, he said, sharing a nod with her mom.

“Your mom’s right, you should go back to sleep”, he added before stepping out, leaving mother and daughter in the entrance.

“Did something bad happen since we moved out?”

Ahsha knew very few things about Zero’s relationship with Jude but apparently that was still a thing and she could hardly picture Zero having some sort of existential crisis and running away without informing Jude. Her mom shrugged.

“How would I know? It’s not like I get to see either Jude or Zero. If anybody knows anything, it surely isn’t me”, she replied with a sigh.

“Do you want some tea?”

Ahsha nodded and followed her to the kitchen.

 

* * *

 

**Then, January 2 **nd 2017** , 2pm**

“What are you doing here?”

Jelena’s voice was sharp as a knife, as always, but her glare seemed even icier. Derek leaned against the doorframe, unapologetic. Both of them were fully aware that he could be no target for her anymore, which made this meeting even more pleasing for Derek – and even less for Jelena.

“Just checkin’ in. Relax, I’ll be off town soon”, he grinned.

 _Not soon enough, though,_  they both thought. He had heard of the news two days before, when Ahsha had woken him up early in the morning. At first he thought it was a joke, then that he had no reason whatsoever to care about it, but man, it was getting serious, especially now that the news had leaked.

Even Ahsha seemed to get nervous about it. “My dad is starting to freak out too, and I don’t like the idea of leaving the town like that”, she muttered earlier when Derek brought up that they had to come back to Miami eventually.

Jelena stood up from her chair, gathering some papers. “I’m sorry, I don’t have time to play with you. You know the way out”, she barked, walking past Derek to head out of her office.

Her heels were furiously hammering the ground as she made her way through the Arena to the conference room. The doors were wide open. Two people from the communication department were on the phone in the corridor. Pete and his assistant-coaches were there, along with his ex-wife Lionel, Zero’s agent Matt, at least three people from the board and two police officers.

Everybody was talking at the same time, barely listening to others. Jelena was starting to feel a headache creeping under her perfectly smoothed hair. Like the rest of them, she hadn’t taken much sleep since the New Year Eve, but her concerns were not always directed towards the same subject that the others. Zero was Zero. Someone she couldn’t stand in any way. Someone she was often dreaming of sending far away, someone she had been _this close_ of sending far away. And as always, this bleached son of a bitch was finding yet another way of ruining everything, of ruining her great plans and most of all, of stealing the cover. Once again, he was proving to be unreliable. It was an understatement to say that his absence had been noticed. Jude Kinkade without his other half, his phone glued in his hand and drinking water all night long, leaving before the countdown, this hadn’t been unnoticed either. It was almost funny to see how people were able to connect the dots, especially when they were not supposed to.

“There are literally no good way to make this work out, it’s PR disaster”, a guy whose name was Todd hissed.

“We wouldn’t be forced to deal with anything if someone did their job and shut their damn mouth”, Lionel barked bitterly, side-eyeing the two police officers.

“The leak didn’t come from us”, Detective Weiner retorted.

Jelena dropped her file on the large conference table, then put her hands on her skinny hips.

“Until we got to you, no one knew a fucking thing about it”, she replied coldly, making everyone turn towards her.

She was rarely vulgar, her threats always wrapped in a bittersweet coldness, but the situation was quickly escalading. Detective Weiner stared at her angrily.

“Now  _I_  have to deal with every damn media of this damn country about my top dog gone missing. So you better get your asses on the line and actually find him, even if it means searching every damn house in this city, because we are not talking of some random teenager with a troubled familial background, we are talking of a billion-dollar NBA team captain gone missing in the middle of an afternoon in a fucking  _red Porsche_ , and I swear if you don’t do your job, I’ll do mine and step out of this Arena to find one of the millions of reporters that are currently standing outside, and tell them that the administration doesn’t find it worth worrying about the disappearance of the first out starter, and believe me, it will start a fire that no one will be able to hold back until this whole city had burnt to the ground.”

There was a long silence in the room. Jelena and Weiner were eyeing each other coldly.

“It’s been more than two days. We can’t stay silent anymore”, Jelena eventually stated, folding her arms before turning her head towards Matt. “How are the sponsors doing?”

Matt was playing with a pen, but she could follow the trail of his thoughts. “They’ve been calling since the leak, the Agency will blow up if we don't do something. I’ve been doing my best, but my boss is pressuring the hell out of me. He wants to know too. I know he’s just about to hand the ‘I’m your boss, this is where your loyalty lies’ card. It’s just a matter of time now.”

Pete stood up from his chair, drawing Jelena’s ice glare on him. “Statements and PR fixings are one thing. How am I even supposed to put up a team with the Captain gone missing? We are leaving for Cleveland _tomorrow night_ ".

Jelena shook her head with a heavy sigh and took a second to analyze the situation and the two options: openly lying to the sponsors just to try to protect Zero’s ass and his cash, or handing over the truth at the risk of making everyone freak out for good. She nodded with her eyes on Pete.

“The Cleveland game will bring too much attention on us. And if Zero isn’t back by then, they will dig harder. We need to come clean, but we won’t say much. We will keep things short and simple. That the entire Devils Nation and organization are working in close collaboration with the LAPD, all that jazz.”

“It’s going to be a mess”, Weiner grunted.

“Welcome aboard”, Jelena replied sarcastically.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, I hope you guys will enjoy this new chapter, i'm certainly enjoying writing it! (:  
> comments and feedbacks are very appreciated, especially regarding the whole timeline thing, i know it can look a bit confusing at first!

**Then, January 4th **2017** , 4.17pm**

_“Jude, you should take some rest.”_

_But it was an empty talk. Lionel had tried before. And Laura. And Matt. Even Sloane. Basically everyone had tried and failed to convince him to lay down and close his eyes. If he hadn’t taken in consideration the advice of his sister-in-law and his former step-mom, he wasn’t going to listen much to Jelena Howard. He was sitting on the couch in his office, his eyes burning from exhaustion. Oddly enough, it was only there that he had been able to find himself on his own – at least until now. There were just too many people. Too many people and too many talks and too many phone calls. Too many plans ahead and scenarios, best-case and worst-case. Jude didn’t look up on Jelena, and just kept staring at an invisible spot on the floor, elbows resting on his laps. Her heels clicked their way through the office, and she sat down next to him. She wasn’t one for empty chats and comforting speeches. Then he realized that she was probably doing the exact same thing he was doing: hiding from everyone._

_“It’s fucking killing me”, his voice not much than an exhausted whisper. “I don't know where he is. I don't even know if he's okay, or if he's angry. I don't know what happened and why he's not calling me back, why he's not showing up. I just don't know and it fucking kills me”._

_He could feel his throat growing tighter, and his voice breaking on the last words. Best-case, worst-case scenarios were just swirling around in his mind. Dead, injured, mad, in danger. Dead, injured, mad, in danger. Dead, injured, mad, in danger. Dead, injured, mad, in danger. And the worst… the worst was that there was nothing, absolutely nothing that could invalidate any of them. He could be dead and buried or just moping in a hotel room in Florida, for all he knew._

_Beside him, Jelena took a deep breath. “I… don’t know how to comfort people. I don’t do hugs. I don’t do sweet talks. I don’t do any of that.”_

_There was an obvious reluctance, even in the words she used. Jude had a dry snort. That never even crossed his mind, that she could be somehow filled with human feelings._

_She took another breath, and Jude realized that she was experiencing something like a physical pain, just by saying these things out loud. “I’m just going to… stay here”._

_And so she did._

* * *

**Now.**

 If there was anything that Lionel hated, it was to be reminded that she was a random person. She definitely wasn’t a random person, and it didn’t matter much if her career in Hollywood was now most likely dead and buried; she had always considered herself as someone promised to great things. For example, she simply hated to be forced to pick up her ID before entering the Arena – and this was an understatement. She’d had her entries in the damn place ever since she had walked in the very first time, even long before she even thought about marrying Oscar – and again, she never really thought about becoming his  _wife_ , rather a partner in crime. The first time she was requested her name to even cross that door she was owning not so long ago, she had snorted, before realizing that the man who was standing in front of her was absolutely serious.

“Do you even know who I am,  _Elias_?” she had snapped back, leaning closer to read the name on his badge.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am. It’s a direct order”, the man replied without an inch of regret.

It had been a serious blow to her ego, and for a brief moment, she had to remind herself that she  _needed_  to get in there, because otherwise, she would have probably slapped the guy and left the place without even a second glance. No, instead, she had bitterly retrieved her ID and bluntly handed it to him with her coldest glare. It didn’t seem to faze him, however, and he handed her back the ID along with a visitor badge. She still hadn’t grown used to it, and certainly hated it just as much as this very, humiliating and infuriating first time.

After being handed yet another visitor badge, Lionel crossed the big, empty atrium after shoving the card deep in her designer handbag, barely glancing to the Janitors team and the staff of the Arena making their way around. Her heels hammered the floor as she was walking in the almost silent corridors of the administrative labyrinth that was the Devils Organization. Most people had no idea how many people were working behind the scenes. How many hands were actually holding the ball.

Myriam, the secretary, lifted her eyes from her computer as she was stepping in the EVP’s office. “He’s in the other office, Ms. Davenport”.

Lionel raised an eyebrow but said nothing, simply nodding in response before turning back. Just a few seconds and a couple of steps separated the two offices, although the owner’s office was much bigger. For a second, Lionel felt hopelessly sad at the sight of the room. So many things had happened because of this damn place. The fact that no one had yet set it on fire was beyond her understanding. She let out a brief sigh and straightened her position, folding her arms. The brown-haired man who was standing in the corner of the room, his back turned to the door, was apparently going through some papers.

“Feeling like taking over the Kingdom?” she drawled, making him startle.

He shook his head after glancing at her. “Trust me, at this point, there’s not even a sane person in this world who would be willing to do that”, Jared replied.

 _We’re all mad here_ , she thought, remembering the line from  _Alice in Wonderland_. He looked slightly tired and his shirt was wrinkled in all parts. His beard had grown bigger without the proper care it surely received on a regular basis – and God knew it was the ultimate proof she needed. She stepped in the office and dropped her handbag on a chair.

“Tell me you’ve got some good news on your side”, Jared groaned as he closed the heavy file he was flicking through, carefully replacing it on its shelf before retrieving another one, just as voluminous.

“I’m seeing him in the afternoon. I’ll just try to keep my motivation low-key on this one”, she replied with a frown. “Is it true? For Coleman?”

Jared shrugged. “There’s not so much we can do to convince him to stay.”

Months ago, this simple sentence would have infuriated her to the point of throwing the nearest object in the nearest window – something she definitely did at home, but she wasn’t really proud of it. The fact that she barely blinked by now was just proving how tired and exhausted they all were. Emotionally drained, that’s what they were. Lionel pressed her lips together while Jared was still going through the file he had just opened. He was probably looking for yet another contract, another tool. Another charade to put up, just to give people the vague impression that somehow, things were fine, knowing all too well that it wouldn’t do the trick. Too many things had happened for it to be believable in the slightest measure. They were running out. Time was running out. They had been fighting and fighting back, through and through, but it was never enough. It seemed never enough. The team was falling apart, and truth was, it had been for the past two years. This place was just a mess. A deserted house waiting to be torn down.

“There might be something”, Lionel replied, drawing the attention of Jared. “Something I might have overheard.”

The man didn’t seem too convinced. He simply raised an eyebrow, obviously skeptical. “Overheard? Really?”

Lionel waved her hand in the air. “Well. Overheard, dug up, who cares?”

But the man was already shaking his head. “The players are resigning, Lionel. One after the other. We’ve grown undesirable, no one would be even willing to bet on the Devils. There will soon be no team left. I don’t see how whatever you heard – or dug up – could seriously prevent this from happening at this point.”

“Derek Roman wants to be traded back to LA”, she said.

“That’s not possible. Professionally, it’s a suicide.”

“Because that’s not about basketball. It’s about Ahsha”, Lionel said, emphasizing her ex-husband’s daughter’s name to prove her point.

She couldn’t say she wasn’t a bit  _jealous_  to see what this man was ready to do for her, making her realize how much she had settled low with her first marriage.

“If we can get Derek back, it’d reassure the players, right?” she insisted, one hand on her hip, another hammering the back of the chair.

Jared sighed and put down the file on the empty desk, folding his arms.

“Lionel, I really don’t think-”

“Fucking admit it! If I can get Derek to sign for the team, will that be enough to stop Coleman’s trade?” And by extension all the others, she added in petto.

For the first time in weeks, maybe months, she felt her heartbeat race faster, and she felt it. Adrenaline.  _Hope_. She didn’t need Jared to tell her that. She didn’t need him to allow her to try. Hell, she didn’t need  _validation._  All she needed was for him to say it. Fucking say it out loud. She was staring at him without even blinking, but it was obvious that he was conflicted.

He eventually rubbed his face. “Well… maybe. Yes. Maybe it could work.”

She didn’t care about the ‘maybe’, she barely heard it at all. All she heard was ‘ _yes’._ A shrewd smile rose on her crimson lips, and she took her handbag back from the chair.

“Fine! I’m on it”, she said, already stepping out of the office.

“Lionel!”

She turned back and glanced at him in surprise. Jared was rubbing his neck, obviously embarrassed by the way he had said her name way louder than he probably expected himself.

“It’s good to see you”.

* * *

 

“Are you really trying to hide from me?”

Kyle stood up from behind her car, plastering a determined expression on her face as she looked up on Derek. She knew this would happen someday, just like Bennie had showed up as well at some point. Angry husbands always found a way back, she thought with annoyance.

“I don’t see what you’re talking about. It’s me, living my life. It’s got nothing to do with you”, she retorted, as she was ostensibly unlocking her car.

Derek raised an eyebrow and glanced at her. She let out a heavy sigh and closed the back door after throwing her duffle bag in.

“Okay maybe I am trying to avoid you. So what?”, she shrugged as Derek rolled his eyes.

He followed her, and as she was opening the driver’s door, he leaned over her and closed it firmly. Kyle looked up at him, offended. If he was seriously thinking he was scaring her, he was deadly wrong. She had known men her entire life and no matter how much they liked to think they were all original models, they were just about the same, and she had dealt with all kind of angry men. Even muscular ones. And she was surely not the last to punch when the situation needed it. 

“She doesn’t even take my calls anymore. I know she’s fine, I know she’s being taken care of, but I need to hear about her. I need to hear _from_ her”, he insisted.

It was pathetic, seriously, and for a moment Kyle felt like she had been taken back to high school. Now she was frankly annoyed, and did nothing to hide it.

“Look, it’s none of my business. I’m here for her because she’s my friend – and also because she has those awful puppy eyes –, but I don’t owe you anything. In fact, if I were the kind of girl to have oath and principles, I shouldn’t even be talking with you”.

“You do owe me, because you were the fucking bridesmaid at our wedding”, Derek bit back.

“I’m sorry for you, but there’s no customer service specialized in screwed up marriages. She’s fine. She needs some time. I don’t know what happened between the two of you, and _this is none of my business_. What I do know is that I’ve got an ex-fake-stepson who’s going _nuts_ because of his evil queen mother slash tutor and I can handle only one crisis at the time.”

She had already enough on her plate right now without having to deal with her friend’s divorce on top of that. Couldn’t they just hire lawyers and settle the details in court like everybody else? This time, when she opened the door, he didn’t try to stop her.

“See you around”, she said, waving her hand as she sat behind the steering wheel and started her car. The baller’s gigantic shape disappeared in the rear view mirror and she let out an annoyed sigh as the muscles in her back slowly began to relax. The distance between her apartment and Jelena’s condo was tripled by Los Angeles’ disastrous traffic, and by the time she eventually park in the front of the building, she had spent about thirty minutes nervously fidgeting in her car instead of the twelve-minute original distance. Miguel was waiting for her just behind the gate, and she raised an eyebrow. Not so long ago, Jelena wouldn’t even let him go to the mailbox on his own.

She lowered the passenger’s car window. “Come on, pup.’ I’m already running late.”

The kid jumped inside of the vehicle and Kyle rushed off back in the traffic.

“How are things going home?”

The kid shrugged. “She’s cool. Weirdly cool? She even let me pick the TV programs these days.”

Kyle snorted. She doubted Terrence even had that much power of decision back in the days where she was actually trying to vaguely look like a human being. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Miguel was one of those kids who just happened to have grown up faster than the others.

As they were waiting for a traffic light to go green, she turned towards him. “Does she have a job or something?”

“I think she does modeling stuff. But the other day she said she was still ‘black-listed’ or something”, Miguel replied, looking through the window.

Kyle hummed in response. She wasn’t sad for Jelena. She had played and she had lost. The fact that she was now spending her evenings with a 8-year-old kid surely meant that she had screwed up pretty badly – because Jelena was definitely not one of those women transformed by motherhood, even by proxy.

“It’s like the world had gone fucking crazy”, Kyle muttered. “I think your Ma’ must be taking her promise to watch over us a tiny bit too lightly these days”, she added with a pat on the kid’s knee.

When they finally reached the Arena, Kyle showed her badge with this almost unnoticeable shimmy move she always had.

“I’m gonna drop you here. Unless you’d rather watch the Girls practice…”

“Ballers are fine”, Miguel replied automatically.

Kyle smirked and was about to knock on Pete Davenport’s door when Sloane appeared at the corner of the corridor. Kyle’s smirk froze for a tiny moment.

“Oh. Hello Kyle”, she said after a second.

Kyle nodded at her.

“Hi.”

They stared at each other for a moment. There was still this coldness between them. Not a bitter, angry kind of coldness, with murdering looks and stilettos flying in each other’s bodies. But definitely a judgmental, ‘You know you messed up’, ‘This is on you’ kind of coldness. Though at least she still had her job, and Kyle was forced to recognize that Sloane had some class – or maybe she was just that clueless.  

“When you’re available, there are several things I’d like to discuss with you. As the Captain of the Devil Girls”, she added after a short silence.

“Sure, let’s see about that after rehearsals”, Kyle replied with a nonchalant wave of the hand, all the while thinking _What an ass-kisser you’ve become, Hart_.

Sloane seemed about to add something but Kyle had already turned back and knocked on the door. Pete’s face light up when he saw Miguel as he was standing up from behind his desk.

“Hi, kiddo. Came over for practice?”

He always had a sincere affection for Raquel’s son, hence why she never even bothered to ask before dropping him here. Truth was, Pete had always been more of a father to him than Jesse ever was – and will ever be –, even though they were just seeing each other once or twice in a week.

Kyle was walking her way towards the exit with her traditional reminder. “Remember, pup, if you mess up…”

“… You chain me in the Devil Girls’ studio, I know”, Miguel sighed.

* * *

  **Then, August **2018****

_“I can’t believe you did that! I can’t believe you just lied about Oscar. After everything he’s done, to every single one of us! How could you do that?!”_

_Kyle raised her eyes on Sloane, who had just rushed in the empty locker room as she was drinking some water between two work-out sessions. She put her bottle back on the bench of her locker._

_“I’m not doing this for Oscar. I’m doing this for myself, and for Jude as well.”_

_Sloane stared at her with dark, wide eyes. “Oh really? Tell me exactly how testifying in favor – because let’s face it Kyle, that’s what you did – of Oscar was helping Jude.”_

_“He’s a pretty boy! He’s the whole catch, the whole package for God’s sake! Sweet face and clean ass and good schools. It’s going to be fine.”_

_“I don’t think you actually understand how bad the situation is right now-”, Sloane said, slowly shaking her head in disbelief._

_“You don’t understand. If I go in there and start bragging about how much of a psycho he'd always been, they will dig, and that’s when things will get really nasty, really fast. Oscar destroyed everyone, that’s true. And he drove me to do stuff for him, and yes, it was messed up and it was dirty. But there are literally at least thirty persons who could tell you that I got into the Devils thanks to him.”_

_“You don’t owe him anything, Kyle. You can’t compare your spot in the team and throwing Jude under the bus!” Sloane’s voice was escalading fast, filling the silent room._

_“My spot in the team is just the beginning. My life, my apartment, my stuff, everything will come into question after that. And I’m not even talking to you about the moment where they dig up all the shit we’ve been doing to frame him for Mia”, Kyle snapped back, gesturing towards her locker which had been once the dead girl’s one._

_“Mia’s file had been jeopardized with the missing coroner. You know that. They can’t just pretend that there was never anything against him and that will play on our side of things!”_

_“Oh my God, is fucking naivety something that runs in the family?!” Kyle couldn’t stop herself from yelling. “All they will see it that you and Raquel and I used to dig up shit on Oscar long before any of this happened. After that, we could well have never even testified at all! No matter how hard you’d try to push it in the right direction, no matter if you and Lionel could even bring up all Jude’s daddy issues and the fact that Oscar had always been a crappy abusive asshole, that will just backfire right in Jude’s face, because childhood wounds always turn people in fucking psychos, that’s what will come up from this mess!”_

_“Kyle-”_

_“Don’t tire yourself. I’m not changing my testimony. Fire me if you want. But trust me, I’m doing everyone a favor on this one.”_

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for the feedbacks here and on tumblr! :D (you can always find me @winterhalters, i'm always ready to chat)  
> here's a third chapter, i can't promise the others will follow in such short periods of time because i might get busy soon, but i wanted to reduce at least a little bit of the angst (:

* * *

 

Rays of light were filtering out under his eyelids.

It felt cold on his skin, like water rushing down his body. 

He didn’t like water. He was a fire person. He could stare at the flames for hours. He had never been scared to put his hand above them, to put his hands in the fire. It was fascinating. Dazzling. He had thought about becoming a firefighter. That was plan B, actually. He _was_ a fire person. Not a water person. He was snarky and heated and quick-tempered. He could go with sandy beaches. He could go with average swimming pools. But Olympic-sized swimming pools? Hell no. He didn’t know how to swim. No one ever bothered to teach him. Water was just some place where he had no control.

Right now, it felt like his body was floating, feeling dark depths underneath him. 

There were voices but words were just distant, tilting sounds. There was a laugh. A sweet laugh echoing somewhere, far away. 

But still, it was as though his body was pulled deeper and deeper. The voices were slowly fading away.  

He was sinking.

And truth was, that wasn’t that bad.

It wasn’t painful. It was just like falling asleep, except maybe for the pressure on his chest.

It was quiet, and soft, and warm.

And he was exhausted. 

 

* * *

 

It started with a knock, Lionel would swear it later. Then two, then three. And then before she even noticed, she was punching the door with a clenched fist. When the door eventually opened on the surprised face of Jared Bushnell, Lionel’s brain barely restrained her body from hitting the man instead of the door.

“Lionel, wha…”

“He’s awake”, she said in a breath.

She was boiling inside as realization was slowly clawing its way in Jared’s brown eyes.

“You mean…?”

“ _Yes_ ”

Jared withdrew from the doorframe and she entered the apartment, while he was closing the door behind her. She knew she looked like a lunatic. She had cried and sobbed for about twenty minutes on the hospital’s parking lot, her hands gripping the steering wheel as she cried her eyes out. She was lucky she had become a nobody. Because at this moment she had been completely unable to do what she kept telling people to do for a living: lock your emotions, and crush your TV behind doors like normal persons do. She had probably more eye-liner on her cheeks than on her eyes, and if it wasn’t for that particular situation, maybe she would have never even taken the risk that someone, _anyone_ , ever sees her like that.

“How is he? What about the brain damages they talked about?”

Lionel had to catch her breath, as she was pacing back and forth in the living room.

She shook her head in response. “They say he’s fine, that he’s still in coma stage. But he’s going to wake up eventually, and he’s gonna ask, and what the hell am I even supposed to tell him?”

She rubbed her face, unable to stop the headache from rising, and much less her thoughts from swirling around. “I-I don’t know what to do. I can’t even- I can’t even process that it’s a _good thing_. It’s been… It’s been so _long_ and so many shit happened and isn’t it awful? Doesn’t it make me a fucking _monster_?”

Jared was sitting on the armrest of the couch. “I think you’re having a panic attack. You should seat down”.

Lionel kept walking without listening, stopping for a second at the center of the living room. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know who I should tell it to, what I’m supposed to say… It’s a fucking disaster, a fucking, fucking disaster”.

There was this quote, stuck in her head. It had been for some time now. Murphy’s Law. _Anything that can go wrong will go wrong._ But everything that could possibly go wrong _already_ did go wrong. There was nothing left to ruin. Fucking nothing left to break. She barely registered it when Jared stood up from the armrest, stepping closer.

“You need to tell Pete, at least. You know he’s going to ask after him on a regular, maybe daily basis and you can’t take the risk that he figures out on his own”, he said, his tone lowering as he went into business mode.

Lionel nodded. She had already anticipated it, but she was still glad to know that she was right. That she was doing fine. Because right now, she felt like she was dancing on the edge, and that there was no net to stop her from crashing on the ground. “I had a team working on an update of the non-disclosure agreements we delivered to the hospital’s staff when he first got in. Just to make things clear. Hopefully it will be the last time.”

There was a brief pause and Jared folded his arms on his chest, leaning his head on the side. “Are we now talking about the elephant in the room?”

Lionel felt her throat growing painful. A silence suddenly fell over the living room, as they were both processing over it.

Jared sighed, not in an annoyed way, but rather like with empathy. “The question isn’t what you can do or not. We’re far past beyond that. The question is what you can allowed yourself to do.”

She didn’t answer right away. Of course she knew that. Of course she knew she had to be the bad guy. But she was fully aware that it’d literally destroy her inside. And suddenly, it felt like this awful day all over again, that fucking day where she had just gripped the sink and let go of all her dreams of motherhood. It was no figure of speech when she told people Jude was her six-foot-something baby son. He did grow to be an extension of her, like a baby she got delivered one morning on her doorstep.

When she dared to speak again, her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “The stakes… The stakes are too high right now. Jude needs to stay focused.”

“Wouldn’t it be the contrary? Instead of, you know, distracting him, maybe it could help him out. Maybe it could give him something to hold onto”, Jared pointed out.

Lionel swallowed thickly and she turned around on herself, pacing slowly. “I don’t know yet, I need to make a check-point with Zero’s doctors”.

She was trying to gather herself up but it was getting really complicated to come up with reasonable, understandable sentences. Because of the emotion, of exhaustion, she couldn’t really tell. Everything was boiling inside and was dangerously about to explode.

“I don’t quite know what I’m supposed to tell Zero yet. How much he can handle right now. It’s better if… You know. I’d rather not send him back to coma as soon as I step in with my big mouth”, she muttered, biting her thumb.

 

* * *

 

**Then, January 8th 2017**

_“Mr. Kinkade, this is Dr. Meddler. Mr. Kinkade is the patient’s partner”, Dr. Monroe said while Jude and Dr. Meddler were exchanging a handshake, then a polite nod with Detectives Weiner and Johnson._

_A worried frown showed up on his face as Jude turned towards Dr. Monroe, confused. “Were you not supposed to be in charge of Zero? Did something else come up?”_

_“Don’t worry, he’s stable by now. He’s still in critical condition, but I believe it’s improving at the very moment we’re speaking”, Dr. Monroe replied._

_Dr. Meddler cleared his throat. He was much shorter than him, even that Dr. Monroe, with frizzy grey hair and rimless glasses he had already adjusted three times on the bridge of his nose since Jude had arrived. “I'm a medical examiner. Since we don’t have much informations about what happened to your partner, the LAPD requested an examination”, he explained, motioning towards the two Detectives._

_Jude stared at him with a bit of concern. Zero had been close enough to death for the past ten days or so. He couldn’t help a helpless look on his right, where Zero was resting in the hospital bed behind the window._

_“How does that work?” he asked, his whole body reacting to the new added pressure._

_He could feel his back, his shoulders, even his neck, stiffening accordingly._

_Dr. Meddler adjusted once again the glasses on his nose. “Well, I was already instructed with his medical records. It’s very unlikely that with the violence of the impact, Zero’s going to remember what had caused it. I believe Dr. Monroe already warned you about all the hypothetical damages coming along, so I’m not going to repeat them.”_

_Jude slowly nodded, silent. Detective Weiner then added that their investigation was supposed to determine where and why it happened, and Dr. Meddler’s, how and approximatively when. They needed to figure out what had happened between December 31 st, 1pm and January 4th, 8pm, between LAX and the street he had been found in, on the other side of the town._

_“It’s not a very standard procedure, but it happens sometimes”, Detective Johnson assured, probably as an attempt to ease the distraught face of Jude._

_Then Dr. Meddler and the two Detectives left Dr. Monroe and Jude behind as they walked to a much secluded conference room where he was supposed to deliver the results._

_“I’m not saying that dead people are easier to manage but I thought he was going to punch me”, Dr. Meddler mumbled as they briefly engaged in small talks just before entering the room._

_Zero’s medical records had been properly arranged on the table, along with various X-ray shots. The Detectives took a closer look at the pictures on display. Dr. Meddler retrieved a pen from his pocket and gestured toward the first shot._

_“See this? The femur had been broken. It’s a clean fracture. One strike, one break. Femur is the hardest bone to break in the entire human body, the capacity to break it, it’s just unbelievable, it’s not humanly possible”._

_He then gestured towards the next picture. “This was the left leg. This one’s the right. The femur isn’t broken here, but the knee got slightly injured. It’s most likely that the two injuries were provoked at the same time, the second one echoing from the impact on the first one. Like a blast wave.”_

_Weiner raised a look on Dr. Meddler. “Car crash?”_

_Dr. Meddler tapped the pen on the border of the table and adjusted his glasses on his nose. “That’s my first guess”._

_“What about the other injuries?” Detective Johnson said, leaning over the table._

_Dr. Meddler replaced the two first pictures by three other X-ray shots, this time of the baller’s head. “The impact on the legs doesn’t justify the injuries on his head. Sure, a fractured skull tags along most of the time, if you allow me the figure of speech, after such a trauma. But the broken nose, broken cheekbone… Basically every other injury except maybe for the fractured skull is a whole other thing”._

_He took back the pen in his hand and started to point several things on the X-rays. “See the pressure of the bones here and here? They don’t follow the same course as the other injuries and bruises.”_

_“He could have just knocked his head, you know, one time the car, one time the ground. I don’t see what’s shocking here”, Detective Weiner observed._

_“Except that if his head had hurt the windshield of the car, which is the most common pattern in these scenarios, surgeons would have found glass remains at least in his head wound – and they didn’t. Neither there nor anywhere else for that matter.”_

_“So what are the conclusions so far?”_

_Dr. Meddler started to gather the X-rays and put them back in the envelop. “My guess is that the car crash happened before or after the other injuries. It’s highly possible that the fracture of his skull happened at the same time, although there’s a lack of bruises due to the explosion of the windshield – and it surely was damaged because again, femur fracture. But for that matter, the fracture could have happened when the body hit the ground. The other injuries might be the result of bad punches. Put altogether it seems fairly awful, but they are not life-threatening”._

_“But he’s been in critical condition ever since”, Johnson objected._

_Dr. Meddler looked up on him._

_Weiner waved with his hand. “Don’t mind him, he’s a fan”._

_The medical examiner hummed in response. “In this case, time was probably the biggest threat against his life. He was left without care and the fractured skull is truth telling. There must have been some kind of hit-and-run.”_

_“He gets beaten, is disoriented, and crashed by the car”, Weiner processed out loud._

_“There were no tire tracks in the street he had been found in. Plus it’s not a place you can go at full speed”, Johnson objected._

_Weiner sighed and stood up from the corner of the table he was sitting on, as Dr. Meddler was gathering the documents. They still had a lot of work to do and no one would just settle for an easy guess._

_“Thank you, Bob. See you around for the records”, he said with a nod as they were heading back to the entrance of the small conference room._

 

* * *

 

There was a white ceiling above him.

A white ceiling.

There were white ceilings everywhere, but he was a hundred percent sure that it wasn’t one he was used to. There was a neon light, and the light was white, cold as ice. It was burning his eyes, but he somehow couldn’t close them. Blurry, all around. And his head, _his head_ was aching. Never, in a million years, he had experienced such a headache. Not even after the worst hangovers of his life. He kept staring for a while, slowly starting to blink, as the sounds around him progressively made their way up to his ears.

“Zero? Zero. Can you hear me?”

There was a lady next to him. He could barely move his head to the right, where she was standing, as if he had badly stiffed his neck at some point.

“Zero, squeeze my hand if you hear me”, she said again with an encouraging voice.

What was happening?

_Who was she?_

He could feel the light grip of her hand on his fingers. But it was distant. He did as requested, squeezing her hand back. It was almost nothing. He could feel almost nothing. His heartbeat raced faster and the blood started to pound behind his ears. The lady seemed to perceive the panic in his eyes, as his blue gaze flew from one corner of the room to the other.

“Zero. Zero, it’s okay. You’re in the hospital”, she said softly.

His heart was now beating hieratically in his chest. He didn’t recall anything. There were just… there were just faces all around in his head. Faces, and moments, and no logical order. He opened his mouth but couldn’t produce a word. The burning in his throat brought tears to his eyes. His skin felt like sandpaper, and he could hardly move any muscle.

The doctor leaned even closer and he wasn’t sure, but he felt like she patted his shoulder. “I need you to breathe. Okay? I need you to keep breathing, and to listen to me carefully. Can you do that?”

Zero was shaking, but he nodded, trying to remind himself to breathe.

The doctor smiled at him. “Zero, you’ve been crushed by a car. It’s okay, you’re safe now. But you’ve spent some time in coma.”

He had almost forgotten to breathe, so he tried.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

_In._

_Out._

His head was still aching – his whole body was aching. He remembered flashes of lights. Loud music. A Christmas tree. Someone laughing. He tried to open his mouth to talk, fighting the pain and the burning down his throat, but there wasn’t any sound he could even come up with. Not a word, not a sound, just the desperate movement of his lips. How long had he been here? How much time did he spend in coma? What the hell did she mean by _crushed by a car_? He couldn’t remember a single thing, and his heart was still beating, and his body aching, and his head hurting and his lungs were just a mess somewhere in his chest, and his eyes were burning. How long had this been going on? Where the hell was he? He could barely lift any part of his body, what the fuck was that?

_What the fuck had happened to him?_

“Zero, Zero please, you need to calm down”, he heard the lady doctor say, somewhere between _Fucking get off of me_ and _Don’t even touch me._ He was fussing in his bed, probably looking like a fucking lunatic.

“I know it’s scary and it’s weird and you don’t know me, but it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay, now. Alright?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for keeping up on the story! :D

 

**Then, June 2017**

_“Please, one question at a time!”_

_“Do you consider that the Devils are still eligible to be a leading NBA team?”_

_“Of course they are. The decisions made regarding the management of the team do not interfere with the players on the court.”_

Yeh, right. As if Jelena’s behaviour hadn’t impacted the team and driven Derek and Terrence to leave the city.

_“But the performances of the LA Devils had been at their lowest level since the 2016.”_

Everybody knows that, they’ve lost their best players for God’s sake!

_“That’s not a question, Linda.”_

_“Is Jelena Howard to be held responsible for 2017’s disastrous season?”_

And who would you blame, beside her?

_“Ms. Howard had been facing difficult times with the trade of two of the Devils’ best members and the unfortunate accident of Zero. She had done her best with the resources she had.”_

She royally screwed up. You should say it out loud, Todd, everybody deserves to know that.  

_“Then why forcing a sell instead of comforting Ms. Howard at the head of the Devils and backing her? Is it the statement made by the League, that Oscar Kinkade is better than a woman from the family?”_

Because he bribed them, you genius!

_“Ms. Howard is an accomplished athlete and an artist, but she had never received any formations regarding business matters. She’s still a very dear member of the Devils Family and will remain associated with the Devils Organization as long as she wishes.”_

Do you really hear yourself, Todd?! It’s Jelena, she’s never going to bow her head down!

_“How did the League allow the sell to Oscar Kinkade after the serious allegations that were formulated against him not so long ago?”_

Because justice is biased. Because he has millions and a damn penis and Mia didn’t.

_“I’m not here to discuss the said allegations, Tom, all I’m willing to say is that Mr. Kinkade had been entirely cleaned in Court and that he always had the best interests of the team at heart since the very beginning of their journey, years ago.”_

_“Are the Devils planning to acquire new players?”_

_“Discussions are definitely on the table right now.”_

Except that no one wants to be traded in the Devils and that means Oscar will have to give up a couple of more millions if he wants to have actual ballers in the team.

_“Will Zero’s spot be filled in the team?”_

_“As heartbroken as we are all regarding Zero’s condition, yes, his spot will be filled.”_

Funny no one ever mentions that he’s supposed to be Oscar’s beloved son-in-law. If that doesn’t speak volumes…

_“What about Jude Kinkade? Will he remain EVP?”_

Come on, why would you want Oscar to throw his favourite toy to the trash?

_“Of course. Jude had proven many times that he was the right man for this position and his father is thrilled to get to work in close partnership with his son. Again, the point of the sell is not to blame anyone for last season. There will be no witch hunt, and Mr. Kinkade is more than willing to ease the transition and to make it as smooth as…”_

_Pete grabbed the remote and shut the TV down without a second glance, making Sloane startle on the couch._

_“Seriously Sloane. You should stop watching this stupid press conference”, he huffed as he was dropping himself on the footstool near her._

_Her hands were still wrapped around the empty mug when Pete reached for them. “I’m not letting anything happen to you. And if Oscar is as smart as he pretends to be, he’s not going to hurt you as long as all eyes are on him. And as it is, it’s not going to stop any time soon.”_

_She crossed his look, her deep black eyes filled with worries. “I’m not just scared for me. It’s a whole thing in itself. He’s toxic. For everyone.”_

_When Pete let go of her hands, she leaned over to put the empty mug on the ottoman table, before resting her back on the couch again._

_“I know you’ve never been a huge fan of Jude. And that you think Kyle put herself in Oscar’s dirty business. But they are just the tip of the iceberg”, she sighed._

_Pete didn’t reply anything, and his eyes fell on the couch. Oscar definitely needed to be put down once and for all. But Jelena running the team had been the worst thing that could have happened beside Oscar. And now both things had happened and it was a fucking mess. Soon his spot would come into question if nothing was changing. When he looked up again, Sloane was considering him._

_“What?”_

_She sighed. “I’m glad Ahsha is in Miami. And Derek, of course. It makes at least one less person to be worried about.”_

_There was a short silence. “Maybe you should take a break from LA. You could spend some time in Florida”, Pete said._

_“And leave you here on your own? You know I’m not going to do that.” She sounded almost offended, which made Pete smile._

_“I’m serious, Sloane. Maybe it’s best for you to leave before he gets really eager about running the show once again.”_

_Sloane shook her head. “It’s Oscar. If he really wants to get to me, I’d rather be as far from Ahsha as I can”._

 

* * *

Zero was looking in distance through the window from his bed, when the door opened.

“Hello there, Sleeping Beauty”, Lionel said with a smile when she entered the room, all dimples and glossy smiles. He stared at her blankly.

For the past two days, he had been alternating between sleeping and staring at the ceiling, sometimes not really realizing he was awake, and sometimes jolting up without remembering falling asleep. The lady doctor who was standing by him when he came back from God knows where later introduced herself as Dr Monroe. She was calm and steady, not so much of a push-over. She had been the only one he was able to remember the name of, among the many other doctors who had just come by.

“We’ve talked a couple of times already, you know?” she said at some point with a nice, reassuring smile. “But it’s okay. Your body was still in coma stage. For some people it takes months to wake up and be able to process over their environment. Believe it or not, but you got lucky on this one.” He didn’t even have the strength to snort, and after another check point on his monitoring, she told him once again that it was going to be okay. For forty-eight more hours, Zero’s mind was nothing but a blank page. Oddly enough, he wasn’t really fazed when Dr. Monroe told him it had lasted two years. It simply didn’t click. Two years meant nothing, not really. It wasn’t something he could understand at this point. They were just two words, echoing here and there.

In fact, Zero didn’t ask any question until the next day, when it rushed over him, like a cold wave, with all the violence of a flash of lightning crashing on his chest. He was still staring in distance when a sweet, distant laugh echoed in his head.

_Jude._

And that’s when things started to go down. Because, before he had realized what was missing, what wasn’t clicking, the missing piece of the puzzle, he was still surrounded by a weird kind of numbness. But as soon as the face of Jude crossed his mind, Zero knew, deep down, that there’d be no turning back. A nurse showed up to check up on him. He managed to say that he wanted to see Dr. Monroe.

“Is there anything wrong? Are you in pain?”, the nurse asked, obviously in a hurry.

Taken aback, Zero replied  _yes_. It was apparently the good answer to give, because not much than three minutes later, Dr. Monroe appeared with a concerned frown on her face. He didn’t have the time to talk – he was still not able to form complete sentences, only words, and it was already  _a lot_ – before she started to flip through his record, muttering things for herself only, about pain killers and analgesics.

“‘m fine”, he said, as loud as he could.

Dr. Monroe looked at him with a puzzled face.

“But you said you were experiencing some pain”, she replied, furrowing her brows.

He felt vaguely uncomfortable, as he recalled now that other patients might be needing her.  _Fuck_   _them_. He wanted to be selfish.

“My boyfriend. Jude.”

To say his name out loud fucked him up right in the guts. Her expression seemed to soften.

“It’s late, Zero. You should take some rest, your body still needs to adapt itself.”

He must have given her a very distraught face.

“Don’t worry, they will be there tomorrow morning”.

On the moment, Zero wanted to correct her.  _He_  would be there tomorrow morning. Zero wasn’t the kind of guy who had the whole supporting family package, and truth was, he hardly needed one. Nothing explained why fucking  _Lionel_ was the one standing next to him. He wanted to ask her what she was doing here. Why she was the first one to come. Her emotion seemed genuine, and she even leaned over him to kiss his cheek, but it all felt fake. Like something was desperately off. Like something was desperately wrong. She wasn’t supposed to be there. She wasn’t supposed to be the one caring for him. She wasn’t the one he even  _needed_ to see.

“Jude” he simply said, frowning.

His voice still felt like it belonged to someone else, but Dr. Monroe had warned him that it might take a while before he could recover his voice – and Zero knew it was a sign for ‘maybe never’. Lionel tossed her hair behind her shoulder, her hand still gripped on her pouch or purse or pocket or whatever that was called, and gave him a surprised look.

“He’s away. For business stuff”, she replied with a light tone.

Zero felt a twinge in his heart. But before he could even say something, Lionel squeezed his arm.

“It’s on me, I’m sorry. I convinced him to go. But he came to see you already, don’t you remember?”

Zero shook his head. At this point he  _hated_  her. They had never been true fans of each other before – and that was an understatement. At best they were on friendly terms when… well, before all broke down. But that was a far cry from being friends. Because Lionel wasn’t a friend for the bad days – at least not his. And now he frankly  _hated_  her, for even being there. There when Jude’s absence was filling the room.

“How are you today?” Lionel asked again, still smiling.

_Like the world has gone fucking crazy,_  Zero thought. Instead, he looked away. He didn’t want her to see the tears that had started to gather and were just about to roll down his cheeks. He was totally screwed up. His body was a disturbing mix between numb and painful. His voice seemed to belong to someone else, he hadn’t even had the balls to face his own reflection in a fucking mirror yet, and now he couldn’t even hold his  _nerves_.

“Don’t worry, everything will be fine now”, she replied with a nonchalant wave of the hand, apparently unaware of his internal battle. “You’ll recover, and before you even notice, you’ll be out there”.

The door opened on Dr. Monroe, whose eyes lifted from Zero on his bed – and probably the distraught face – to Lionel, still standing up, her monogrammed pocket glued to her hip.

“Oh, I’m sorry to bother you. I will come back later”, Dr. Monroe said with a nod.

“Oh no, I just came to say hi. I need to go, actually”, Lionel replied with her fucking, weird light tone.

There was something strange in the way she was talking, or maybe Zero had just forgotten what her voice sounded like, yet he couldn’t help but find something oddly awkward. Almost hysterical. That and the fact that she hadn’t even bothered to sit down. With a last pat on his shoulder, she fucking  _left_ , the smell of her perfume lingering long after she had walked out of the room.

“She’s… quite something”, Dr. Monroe said with a raised eyebrow as she was coming closer to the bed. “Family?”

Zero’s heart sank for good.

“No one”, he said.

He couldn’t quite figure if he was answering her question or simply making an overview of his actual family.

Jude was family.

But Jude wasn’t there.

And so he had no one.

 

* * *

 

**Then, September 2017**

_Jude's hand froze on the door handle, his heart skipping a couple of beats._

_"Come on, son. Come on in." Oscar purred._

_He was sitting by the bedside, comfortable in the armchair, his elbows on the armrests. It was almost surprising that he hadn’t found a way to be offered a glass of scotch already. Jude's brain failed to process what was happening, and he was still standing in the doorframe, his eyes going from Zero to Oscar, Oscar to Zero, over and over again._

_"What are you doing here?" Jude huffed in a breath._

_Oscar had a simple shrug. "I came to pay a visit. Didn't buy flowers though."_

_Jude finally let go of the door handle, but he didn't close the door. Oscar was a wild beast. There never was any good in being with him in a closed room. He tried to cool his features, but all he could think about was that Oscar was fucking inches away from Zero, and that Zero himself was a couple of machines, a couple of strings away from death. Oscar didn’t seem to be bothered by the lack of answers from Jude, nor the fact that he was sitting here just as he was doing in his office – like he fucking owned the place. But he had no right to be here. He had no right to be this close from Zero, Jude wanted to scream._

_“I must say, if I wasn't as disgusted as I am, I’d be proud of you. You managed to out NBA's terrible child and to make it look like the purest thing in the world, all the while keeping a hold on the situation. Handling this, handling_ him _, far better than you have tried before.”_

_Jude’s heart was pounding. Oscar was scanning every single one of his movements from this cold, iron glare of his. Jude managed to unclench his fists, but it felt like a fight against his own sanity._

_"I don't need anything from you anymore. Certainly not approval. Or validation”, he blurted, yet with a low tone._

_The door was still opened and the last thing he needed was for nurses to rush in._

_Oscar smiled as he had said something truly amusing, and Jude knew that he couldn’t win this fight. He had arrived on the battlefield without even knowing there was a pending battle. He hadn’t called him in his office. He hadn’t called at all. He had taken him by surprise. He was in offensive mode. And all was left to Jude was the defensive one, with only hopes to limit the amount of injuries the man, who according to Nature was his own father, would decide to inflict him. Because again, Oscar was the one deciding. He had been since the beginning._

_"See, that's where you are deceiving yourself, son. You might have finally figured out that I will never be the conventional father you always craved me to be. But truth is, you are not the conventional son I wish you were. And yet, this is all we got."_

_Jude’s jaw clenched even harder, but it ended with a smile. A joyless, sardonic smile. And judging by the frown that appeared on Oscar’s face for even less than a split second, he wasn’t expecting sarcasm from him._

_"You might have forced the medias to buy your stupid PR stunts, but a couple of overmediatized brunches will not make it for all the shit you've done. And I’m not just talking about me.”_

_Oscar let out snort. “Me? Why should I apologize? You’re the one who changed the rules, Jude. You are the one working behind my back.”_

_Oddly enough, he remained perfectly still. He was still disadvantaged by the fact that his fucking boyfriend was laying on a hospital bed two steps away from him, and by the fact that minutes ago he had no idea he’d be facing Oscar, and by the fact that he had been drinking coffee for the past thirty-six hours, and by his lack of sleep, and by everything else. He was just trying to get into his head, to get under his skin, like he always did. All he had to do was to block his mind. Shut his brain down. Let his words fly in the air. They were empty words. They had no meaning. Zero meant something to him. The judgment of Oscar did not._

_“I don't see what you're talking about. Am I not the dutiful son you expect me to be in front of the cameras?” His voice was filled with sarcasm and irony and he did nothing to ease it out._

_Oscar licked his lips. “Oh I’m not here because of what happens in front the cameras. I’m here for what happens behind doors.”_

_Untold truths were hanging up in the air, and Jude hardly managed to keep himself together. He knew. He fucking knew. And just by the way Oscar was looking at him, he knew that he had understood._

_“I'm a very well informed man. I knew what was happening from the cell you let me rot in, do you expect me to be blindfolded ever since my beloved wife kindly offered me a way out?”_

_Jude swallowed thickly. He had to recognize that the man was coming hard on him. On them. Before Jude could drive himself to reply, the cold glare of Oscar drifted from him to Zero, and Jude felt his heartbeat race even faster. How could he not be hearing it at this point?_

_“I had big plans for him, you know? Such a tragic story, really.”_

_He wasn’t even remotely trying to look sad. Jude, for his part, was about to throw up. This, the simple sight of this man, this close from Zero, was giving him nothing but massive waves of murdering thoughts. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to control himself if he was only daring to touch him. Deep down, he knew Oscar wouldn’t. Nothing about homophobia. Just the fact that Oscar was perfectly aware of how his words were always harming more than any physical threat. He liked to think himself as a strategist, when the truth was that he simply wasn’t man enough to do the dirty job. As the rational part of Jude’s brain knew it, Oscar didn’t even bother to lean closer to Zero as he already was. Instead, he stood up from the armchair and left the bedside to head towards the door, still hanging wide open. Jude’s shoulders stiffened as Oscar was slowly pacing behind him._

_“Don’t force me to punish you once more. Your boy won’t be so lucky next time.”_

_For a moment, Jude remained there, standing in the doorway, frozen, arms to his sides, unable to move, unable to blink, alone in the room. All he could see was Zero, broken, half-dead, bruised Zero, shattered Zero, and his heart was pounding in his chest, and it kept rising louder and louder and it was as though it was going to rip his ribcage open and explode at any moment. The cocky smile, sparkling blue eyes, blond hair, were nowhere to be seen. The hands Jude liked the touch of, the perfect lips he loved to kiss, they were nowhere to be seen. The body lying on the hospital bed was everything_ but _Zero. That body was bruised, and broken in so many places. Oscar had done that. Oscar had not just destroyed Zero. Oscar had crashed Jude’s world._

_Next thing he knew, he was in his office, unable to even remember how the hell he had managed to get here. He had loosened the knot of his tie as much as possible in an attempt to ease his respiration, but his heart was still pounding and Oscar’s words were still hanging in the air, following him since the hospital room, an invisible knife on his throat. It felt like someone had branded him with hot iron, or ripped him to shreds, or maybe all at once. For the past months he had almost succeeded into luring himself that the Police and Laura and people were just wrong, that it was just an accident, because Jude wanted it to be. He wasn’t naïve anymore, he had tasted both love and pain, he had seen peace and chaos, he had seen it all, he had his share of bad memories and regrets, but he had managed to keep going, he had managed to find some peace and quietness and those two things were revolving – his whole world was – around Zero, around Gideon._

_His desk was covered with neat piles of papers and folders and files. He had always wanted to be part of it. Part of the Arena. Part of the Devils. Suddenly, Jude felt struck by hopelessness. All of this, all of these years trying to gain some sociopath’s approval just because genetics and Nature had tricked them into some sort of messed up biological prank, all of_ this _for the sight of the man he loved resting in some hospital bed, perhaps forever? Why was he doing this? Why was he even trying? Why had he been fighting and fighting again, through and through, why couldn’t he just accept Zero’s trade? Let fucking things be and not step up and finally be freed from this? Why did he keep trying?! He rose up to his feet, grabbed everything he could and threw it all away. Papers and folders and files, phone and computer and even his cell phone, he threw it all away, sacking everything, sending it all crashing on the ground with a world ending sound._

_From the depth of his wrath, he heard someone scream his name, and when he looked up, his secretary, Myriam, was standing in the doorframe, staring at him in shock._

_“GET OUT”, he shouted at the top of his lungs. “_ GET OUT _”_

_She backed off and closed the door behind her, probably scared for the rest of her life, but Jude didn’t care, he couldn’t, he was blinded by tears, tears of anger or despair he didn’t know. All the emotions he had been locking in, all the tears he had not shed over Zero’s broken body, all the things he had not said, all the thing he had not done, it all fell over him. When there was nothing left to break, nothing left to throw away, Jude’s wrath slowly started to fade away, and he found himself sitting flat on the ground, his back resting against his desk. His breath was heavy as burning tears rolled down his cheeks, burying his face in his hands._

_He didn’t try to stop them._

 

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Then, July 2017**

_Jude checked out the clock in the corner of his laptop. After sending the last mail on his list, he closed the computer and stood up. Myriam raised her head behind her desk, as he stopped to put his jacket on. “I’m going to the hospital. I’ll be gone less than an hour, tell people I’ll call them back before the end of the afternoon.”_

_The secretary nodded and he stepped out in the hallway. He politely shook hands with various people greeting him on their way to Oscar or whatever business meeting they had planned – one of the ‘perks’ of being now the Kinkade Crown Prince –, before taking the elevator, but instead of calling for the ground floor and the Atrium, he called for the second floor. After a moment, the doors of the elevator slowly opened and Jude stepped out in the empty corridor, walking inside of Pete’s office._

_“You’ve taken your time”, Jelena drawled as soon as he had closed the door. She was leaning against the desk, obviously very annoyed._

_“I have a full-time job, in case you forgot”, he said._

_She shrugged. “I’d still have mine if your boyfriend had managed to stay alive”._

_Only Jelena was able to throw such antics without even feeling remotely guilty._

_“Practice will soon be over, so if you have something to say, just spill it, or all this little charade would have been beyond useless”, she said again, gesturing around to show the office._

_History had proven that Oscar could even know what was happening in his very apartment when he had nothing beside Zero to hide. He couldn’t risk to meet her at her place, nor her to come at his; a public place was just out of the question. And so he had been trying to figure a way to meet with Jelena, until he found out inadvertently that Miguel was sometimes attending practice._

_He stepped closer from Jelena and tucked his hands in his pockets. “I want to bring him down.”_

_Jelena tilted her head on the side, her perfectly straight hair falling on her shoulder. There was some kind of strange connection between him and Jelena. Nothing like Lionel. They were not friends, not remotely close from one another, and Jelena had the emotional capacity of a Komodo dragon. But somehow, she had always considered him as a worthy enemy, and aside from Zero and maybe Lionel who had both been the privileged witnesses of his manipulations across the years, the only one who had not underestimated him. He knew that he wouldn’t have to name him for Jelena to understand it; he just had the intuition that she would go with the big fish right away._

_He wasn’t mistaken. “Funny, cause not so long ago you were pretty much trying everything to get where you are today. What changed?” She was scanning his features with attention, but if there was anything that Oscar had improved in him across the years, it was the art of self-domination. “I have my reasons. Are you on board?”_

_She watched him carefully for a couple of more seconds, then she folded her skinny arms, tossing her hair back with a movement of her head. “What do I have to gain from this?”_

_“EVP.”_

_She scoffed. “And let me guess, you in the big chair? No way.”_

_“You have no other option. So if you plan on becoming a second class video clip choreographer, just tell me and I’ll deal with him on my own”, Jude said evenly._

_Jelena eyed him with her cold look. EVP was a slap in the face, but it was by far the least painful she would get. She was a great dancer and athlete, but she was at the top of her career when she was Captain of the Devil Girls and every other step in this direction would only bring her down. All she had beside her skills was her good look, but she wasn’t exactly a conventional beauty among models. Either way, beauty and sports only served to take you to business once the final bell had rang; and after having been publicly acknowledged as the one who had ruined a NBA team, she wouldn’t even get a job as executive assistant. EVP was her last shot in the business._

_Her jaw clenched under her tanned skin as she probably came to the exact same realization. “Why would you need me then?”_

_“Because you’re good at that. Hunting and framing people. You’ve succeeded to destroy him once. If you and I team up together, I think we have a fair shot at destroying him once and for all”, Jude said sincerely._

_Jelena scoffed, then granted him a glance. “He’s been cleaned for Mia’s murder and I’m pretty sure he had done everything in order to dig his dirty business regarding his finances even deeper. What’d be your angle?”_

_“You. More precisely, the bullet you took.” Jelena stiffened almost imperceptibly at the evocation of the incident. “I had to switch with another PI and it took him more time than the one I usually do business with. Long story short, Oscar was in town the night you got shot, and his alibi is nothing but hot air.”_

_“That’s a far cry from being able to prove he has anything to do with it”, Jelena replied haughtily._

_“Not if we play by his rules.”_

 

* * *

  

Lionel was about to step in the Arena when she came across no one but Derek Roman, apparently heading out from the main entrance. She ostensibly raised her oversized sunglasses on her head. “Look at you, lurking in another team’s quarters. Some people may call it  _collusion_.”

Derek snorted, shaking his head. “Collusion? Really? They haven’t made it to the playoffs in two years.”

Lionel smiled for herself. She didn’t thought it would be so easy to bring the subject up. She wouldn’t have another chance like this, at least not soon enough. She shot him an accusing look, tilting her head on the side. “And who’s to blame for that?”

Derek furrowed his eyebrows, folding his arms. “That’s not on me.”

Lionel scoffed. “Oh you think so? You and Terrence left at the same moment and without even a chance to stop you. Jelena was stupid enough to approve Terrence’s trade, that’s one thing. But how could you leave before the Devils even had the time to replace you? Leaving when all the credits had already been spent on lesser players in basically every other team of this damn division, that was inconsiderate of you.”

“Zero always wanted to be top dog. I handed him over that chance on a fucking silver plate”, Derek retorted.

She waved her hand, sweeping the idea away. “Stop pretending you did it out of generosity. You did it just the way you’ve always been doing since I know you, because of Ahsha. See where it had led you.”

“Back off”, he grunted with a murderous look.  “You don’t know shit about my marriage”.

She let him walk past her before adding: “But I do know shit about losing a baby.”

Derek stopped in his track and turned his head towards her after a second. The murderous look had vanished, instead looking at her as if he was trying to figure out whether or not she was bluffing. She wasn’t. At least not for this part. Since he wasn’t walking back to her, Lionel conceded a few steps ahead.

“Who told you that?”

Lionel shrugged. “Your mother-in-law.”

He didn’t need to know that she had only overheard a conversation about it, and that she wasn’t exactly doing pyjama parties with Sloane. That was beside the point. And using Ahsha’s one-month pregnancy to her benefits wasn’t going to faze her, especially if in the end, her ex-husband’s daughter’s interests conveniently reached Lionel’s and the whole team’s.

“Look, I’m not fishing for more problems right now, trust me. My plate is already full.”

If she didn’t know him any better, Lionel would swear that there was a hint of  _embarrassment_ on his face.

“I’m not your friend. I’m not Ahsha’s. But if I can give you a piece of advice… Ahsha  _belongs_  here. She needs her parents and she needs you. And all of this can be found only in this town.”

And before he could add anything, Lionel turned back. She had gambled a lot on this one. 

 

* * *

 

**Then, October 2017**

_It had been thirteen hours since Jude had left the house, when he eventually stepped in. If it was up to him, he would go to his old apartment. Except that it had been sold almost two years ago and he had nowhere else to go. The house was always so quiet. So full and so empty at the same time. There were Zero’s stuff everywhere, but Zero was nowhere to seen. He could hear him talk, and laugh, and sometimes he was just finding himself replaying some conversations they had. Not even the big important ones. Not even those big declarations. Just the stupid stuff that they said. Daily life. Quarrelling about the dishes and just ending making out in the kitchen, because everything always ended this way._

_That time where Zero had convinced him God knew how – and no doubt He surely didn’t approve of it – that they should spare two rooms to paint themselves in the house, and it all ended up with both of them much more covered in grey and blue shades than the walls they were supposed to work on. They had made a mess, but at least it had been made with love – that’s what Zero said back then. He wasn’t regretting all the time and the energy invested in this house. But he regretted his old apartment. He regretted the things that had happened there, and all of those that were prevented from happening in this house. The apartment was the happy times._

_He took off his jacket and was just entering the living room when he realized that the lights were up, and that there was someone sitting on the couch._

_Jude put the jacket down on the back of one of the massive couches - three of them occupied the center of the room around the glass and chrome coffee table. “What are you doing here?”_

_“You never call, I thought I could drop by”, Laura said._

_Jude loosened the knot of his tie and headed for the kitchen. He desperately needed a glass of cold water. He couldn’t even remember the last time he used a drink since the morning, and his constant level of stress had already cost him several pounds. “This is a very complicated period, Laura. I’m busy, and as you can see, I don’t have much spared time.”_

_She followed him in the kitchen, while he opened a cupboard and poured himself some water. “Really? Not even to see your boyfriend?”_

_He knew this was coming. He had thought about it as soon as he had acknowledged her presence in the house. He remained silent for a second, the glass in his hand. “They said you came twice this week, Jude. Fucking twice”, she exclaimed after a moment._

_Fury was darkening her naturally soft features, and he had no hard time to read the disgust that his recent behaviour was making her feel. “He’s dead to you now? Is that it?” She was now screaming with a high-pitched voice._

_Jude exhaled, feeling a headache creeping. He put the glass down and folded his arms, leaning against the kitchen elements. “I told you, it’s very special time of the year. I have basically every contract of the team to review and…”_

_“Fuck that, Jude!”, she yelled again. “Your damn family is all over the news, do you think I’m stupid?”_

_“You’re mixing things up”, Jude said with a stern voice._

_“Oh why, because you reconnecting with your father and not coming to visit him have nothing to do? Is that it, Jude? IS THAT IT?”_

_Of course it had everything to do. Because Oscar had started a high-scale charm offensive and suddenly Jude was part of the plan. Suddenly, the Kinkades were everywhere. Suddenly, their family was loving and tight-knitted, entirely dedicated to the success of the Devils. It had given him many sleepless nights, trying to process over and over again, what would follow. One afternoon, Oscar was threatening to cut Zero’s respirator after throwing a car on him. The next one, he was the loving son, the Crown-Prince. Everything he had ever dreamed about, and more, just like Jelena fucking pointed out months before._

_Jude had stopped being a nobody the day Zero had kissed him court side. But even still, he was just Zero’s other half, always half in the shadow. And that was fine. Zero was the star. If anyone was made for that, for the glitter and the gold, it was Zero, not Jude. Now everything was different. He had been thrown in the deep end of the pool. Every meeting was the occasion to be introduced as Oscar’s creature, the 'prodigal son and heir to the Kinkade name’. The first time someone had told him “It must be so exciting, having such a father”, he almost threw up on the conference table, barely restraining the physical reaction this statement was making him feel._

_“He’s not even dead and you’re already turning your back on him”, she said, heartbreak filling her voice._

_“So what, because I’m not having a nervous breakdown, I’m forgetting him?” Jude snapped back._

_Laura stared at him in shock, as if he had slapped her. Maybe he did, somehow. He was so fucking tired. The only reason he was avoiding the hospital was to protect Zero, at the expense of his own well-being. Not seeing him was a constant heartbreak. He had been protecting Lionel from Pete, then Zero from himself, then Lionel from Oscar, then Zero from Oscar, and now Laura from herself. Not telling her, not screaming at her face that his fucking father had ordered him to be crushed in cold blood, it was the only way to protect her from doing anything stupid, such as going to the cops right away. But who had been protecting him, the whole time? Who had been ensuring that he was still able to wake up and fight every damn morning? Pretending to be fine, pretending to control the situation. That’s what he had been doing while Laura was fucking crying her eyes out in this damn hospital hallway. Even the days where Zero was gone missing, he had to hold back Jelena, prevent Lionel and Laura from tearing each other apart, and deal with Pete._

_“I’m just getting back to my life. And you should do the same”, he added after a moment._

  _“He was scared of that, you know”, Laura said, slowly. “He was scared that someday, Oscar would call you back, and you would drop everything for him.”_

_Jude tried to suppress the aching in his chest, where his heart had once been, and to keep his breathing regular. Before he could say another word, she turned around and left the kitchen. Within seconds he heard the front door slam loudly._

 

* * *

 

It was late in the morning when Pete entered in a fight with Myriam, the secretary, as he tried to bypass her and to storm into the EVP’s office.

Jared Bushnell opened the door, frowning. “What’s all this fuss about?”

Pete turned towards him, directly pointing at him. “Whatever bullshit you're planning to do about Zero, it has to stop  _right now_.”

Bushnell gave his secretary a small and stiffy nod before returning inside, closely followed by a very upset Pete.

As soon as he closed the door, Bushnell angrily stared at him. “Are you insane, yelling like that?” he hissed.

“No, you hear me out. It's not because you're sleeping with Lionel that she’s right about everything. Been here, done that”, Pete replied. He was done with being polite and measured.

Bushnell haughtily raised an eyebrow. “I'm not sleeping with her.”

Pete scoffed. Everybody knew they had  _at least_  been together a couple of weeks. Lionel wasn’t exactly known for her discretion and gossips inside the Arena travelled faster than in high school in a class full of teenagers worked by their hormones. But that was beside the point, and Pete couldn’t even find the slightest interest in Lionel’s sex-life if only it was done with someone regular.  _Not the damn EVP_.

“Oh cut the crap! My point is, the man is losing his mind, he thinks everybody has just given up on him and that’s not fair to anyone!”

He was angry as he rarely was. Jude’s name was hanging up in the air and for a moment Bushnell looked tired.

He shook his head and started to retreat behind his desk. “That's not that simple, Coach. Zero is at an extremely sensitive stage of his recovery and-”

“And you think openly lying to his face about his boyfriend is going to help him? He's  _wrecked_. Lionel doesn’t even know what she’s doing! Playing shopkeeper with a NBA team is one thing, but we’re talking about his fucking  _mental health_.”

Pete hadn’t even bothered checking on internet how many people were surviving coma only to commit suicide when they were not able to recover their past life. There was no need; he already felt that this percentage was awfully dramatic. Seeing Zero with his own eyes had been more than enough to give him sleepless nights. He just couldn’t believe that Lionel would play this far with something as extreme as mental health. She had been on the loop ever since she and Jude had found that kind of weird chemistry together along the road, as to how much he was important to her and how she was the one who knew him best and cared most for him and all those crap about all that stuff. How would Jude react when he finds out that she had been wrecking his boyfriend in order to keep him  _focus?_

“And you think she’s happy with this situation? You think it's easy for her?”

“I never said that-“

“You can say whatever the hell you want about her but right now she’s playing three games at a time, and none of this is for her own benefits”, Bushnell cut him off.

Pete couldn’t help but hiss at that. Lionel deserved a medal, of course! That was easy. As soon as Zero had woken up, she suddenly had found herself too busy to deal with him.  _After_ openly lying to him, leaving Pete no choice but to follow her into that damn rabbit hole she had jumped in. That was messed up beyond measures. And now over a week had passed, and not only Zero’s mood wasn’t improving in the slightest, but according to his doctors, he was frankly drowning into fucking clinical depression.

“ _This is exactly my point_ ”, Pete hammered. “This is  _not_ about Lionel. This is about  _Zero._ This is about his recovery, about  _his life_. You’re just pretending that not knowing is better for him, well let me tell you that it’s  _not._ ”

He had barely the time to let the last word drop before there was a small knock on the door. Bushnell imperceptibly straightened. “Come in”, he ordered.

Myriam looked shyly in the room, trying to avoid Pete’s glare. “Rowan Geller left a message for you. He expects you to meet in the afternoon to discuss the contracts.”

Bushnell nodded, recovering his calm surprisingly easily. “Confirm the appointment, and make a call to Jensen and Osborn as soon as possible. I have to make sure everything’s in order before meeting Geller.”

Myriam agreed with a nod and went back to her office, closing the door behind her. Pete furrowed his brows. “Contracts?”

Bushnell, who had seated back behind his desk and started to tip on his keyboard, didn’t bother to look up. “Yes. It’s open season and auctions are rising fast.”

Pete groaned. “And when did you plan on telling me?” Even Jude, when they were not in exactly friendly terms, had the decency to tell him about the ongoing trading policies.

Bushnell raised his head and sneered. “Are you not the one who’d been pushing over  _and over again_  about buying new blood?”

Asking was one thing, receiving the top tower approval was another, Pete groaned in petto.

“Besides, I thought your son-in-law had told you all about it”, Bushnell said with a shrug.

“What? Why?”

Since Derek had moved out of Los Angeles and been traded to Miami, Pete hadn’t exactly been talking to him on a daily basis; most of the news were from Ahsha and he still hadn’t find the time to process that his daughter, whom he had met only three years before, was now married.

“Derek Roman wants to be traded back”, Bushnell replied, frowning. “You didn’t know?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Then, October 27th 2017**

_There were cops everywhere. He had been sat in the living room, surrounded by half a dozen of cops who were, among other things, making sure he wouldn’t just run away. He wanted to scoff at that. If he had meant to escape this- if he had only meant to walk away, he would have done that long before calling 911. Perhaps he wouldn’t have called it at all. His hands were shaking as he rubbed them over his face._

_It was over. It was all over. The pain and misery and anger and pressure. The days and nights spent, waiting for something to happen, because something, someday, would befall on him and crush him to the ground until there would be nothing left of him. It was over and yet everything was starting again. That was just the beginning. He could still hear the screams and the shouts and see the office and the body lying on the floor. He could still hear the sound of the glass breaking in a thousand pieces, and the pain he felt, and the blood, on him, on the floor. Crimson drops straining his shirt._

_“Let me in! This is my fucking house! I LIVE HERE. Let me in!”_

_He was driven out of his thoughts and taken back to the closest form of reality he could possibly get, as screams came from the main entrance of the house, covering the discussions of police officers and the sound of at least 30 persons walking their way from one floor to the other. Jude’s heartbeat raced faster as he recognized Lionel’s angry voice._

_“I don’t care about your fucking crime scene, THIS IS MY HOUSE.”_

_When Jude turned his head, he saw her storm in the main entrance after she literally pushed aside the two police officers standing in her way. She crossed his look and instantly, she was there._

_“Oh my God, Jude- Jude, I thought-, when they told me someone had died, I thought-…” she stuttered, out of breath as she was holding him tight._

_Jude couldn’t say a word, but he realised that having her near was something he didn’t know he needed as much as oxygen. He swallowed thickly._

_“What happened?” she asked in a whisper after a second, parting from him._

_For the first time since the cops had arrived, he talked. His voice was rough. “We fought. Verbally and physically”, Jude replied, showing her the bandage on his left hand. He had ripped it opened on the coffee glass table in Oscar’s office. It was still bleeding fairly, and painful with that, and he didn’t know when he’d be able to get the stitches he needed._

_“Ma’am, you can’t stay here”, a police officer patiently explained._

_Lionel glared at him, tightening again her arms around Jude. And then, in a split second, she burst into tears, dramatically clinging onto Jude. The cops in the living room all looked at each other with affliction._

_“I… can’t… believe…”, she sobbed again and again._

_Jude felt like he was watching the scene from outside of his body. His eyes were dry, and his heart was calm and he was quiet. That’s when he realized that since Lionel had walked in, everyone had stopped paying attention to him, focusing on her instead. It probably was the purpose of it._

_She tucked her face between his shoulder and his neck. “I thought he had killed you”, she whispered in his ear. “I thought he had killed you.”_

_He already did, Jude thought. I’m already dead._

 

* * *

 

 “What did we say about knee bends?”

Zero groaned. He looked up as Dr Davis, his physiotherapist, was glancing at him in annoyance. “I’m not going to do another week at 20”, Zero said bitterly.

“You’re supposed to listen to your doctors. I _am_ your doctor. I can give you 15, but that’s as far as I can go.” And without even waiting for an answer, he gestured towards the bench on the side. Reluctantly, Zero slowly paced between the parallel bars, before dropping himself on the bench. Dr Davis kneeled on the side and checked up on his right leg, stretching it several times before taking a closer interest on his knee.

“Three weeks ago you could barely lift your own weight. 15 is already good. Maybe in a couple of days-”

“I’m _sick_ of waiting for the days to just come and go!” Zero blurted. Since he had woken up, everything was just about _waiting_.

“Look. I’ve been working on this for over a year now”, Dr Davis said, pointing at his legs. “It’s because I’ve been doing my best all the time you were in coma that you might not feel like it’s really hard to catch on moving, walking, and exercising. But it doesn’t mean that it’s _that_ easy either. Muscle memory is one thing. Standing up is something entirely different.”

Zero bit back a bitter retort. “You might need a little more stretching on this one. What about your hand? Still stiffy?”

Zero groaned a _yes_ and Dr Davis took his left hand. He was rubbing the palm with a focused look, and then attempted to make him do several stretching exercises. It felt still desperately stiffy and weirdly numb, and as the weeks went on, he was starting to wonder if it wasn’t just messed up forever. They had realized afterwards that he had twisted it at some point during the accident and that they hadn’t seen it until he woke up. It wasn’t an important sprain, Dr Davis said at first. _Weeks ago_. But Zero could feel that the good doctor wasn’t as assured anymore, and he was fully aware that they had badly fucked up on this one. Even though he had other things to care about. Like, _Jude._ Because his fucking whole world revolved around him. He _did_ try to call him. Thousand times. But Jude never called back.

The nice Dr Monroe kept coming over to check on him. He didn’t know if it was because he was feeling so alone but he was starting to like her. She was _nice_. That was weird. He didn’t do _nice_. Especially with people he didn’t know shit about. When he had opened up to her, because he was now _confessing_ stuff like that – and _fuck_ , coma had fucked him up beyond repair –, she had laughed. “It’s a very normal reaction, don’t worry. Most patients tend to develop a bond with the first person they see when they wake up. Like, a duckling.” Zero wanted to reply that he wasn’t ‘most patients’ but he knew it was just bullshit. He was the damn standard comatose and there was nothing he could about it.

After another hour spent with Dr Davis, stretching his muscles, Zero was taken back to his room. His head was still swirling around the only reason why Jude wasn’t even bothering to make a call to him. He had just woken up after nearly two _years_ of coma and he was feeling utterly, completely betrayed. Betrayed and hurt beyond words. He had just lost two years of his life, two years he would never get back, and slowly came to the realization that he had spent the same amount of time of his relationship with Jude as dead.

They were not married. They never professed each other love and fidelity for eternity. Two years – that was plenty of time for Jude to get back to his life. Maybe that was it. That was what Lionel was hiding – because she definitely was hiding something. Jude had moved on. He’d gotten another boyfriend, less complicated, less messy, less of an asshole. Maybe even left the town. Everyone had never stopped telling him he wasn’t the right guy for Jude, and he had finally believed them. He wished so hard he had never woken up. He wished he had died and never had to deal with this situation.

After a small knock, the door opened, and Zero saw the giant shape of Derek Roman walking in. His heart sank a little more. That was it. If Derek was there before Jude, then it surely meant he wasn’t planning to come any time soon.

“Holy shit, you’re a hell of a bitch to kill, you know that?” Derek smirked.

Zero forced himself to swallow, even if his throat was dry as a desert. “I thought you were in Miami”, he replied.

Derek walked across the room and leaned against the wall next to the window, his hands in his pockets. He shrugged. “I was. I still am. Somehow. It’s complicated.”

A dry, joyless snort came out of Zero. Of course. He had been out for two years but the world kept turning round. Without him. And all this time he was in this bed. There was a twinge in his heart, leaving him to wonder how much pain he could still endure before it simply stopped beating for good.

“Why did you come?” Zero finally asked after a silence. He didn’t care if he sounded mean or brutal. He didn’t really care about people at all. The only person he was caring about _didn’t care back_.

Derek looked at him intensely. “Look, I know we’ve been quite on opposite sides in the past but, dude, I never wished something like this to happen to you. I’d never wish this to anyone”. 

“If you came only to make good press, screw you, man. I don’t need your fucking pity”, he spat out with a cold glare.

Derek shook his head and folded his arms, still leaning against the wall, clearly unimpressed. “How do you feel?” he asked, openly ignoring Zero’s intervention.

“How do you think _I feel_?” he snapped bitterly. 

Derek finally motioned from the wall he was standing against and took a chair from the corner, turning it so that he could rest his elbows on the back.

“My _boyfriend_ didn’t even bother to come back in town. How am I supposed to feel after that?” he eventually whispered with a shaky voice even he wasn’t expecting.

“Who said that?” Derek frowned after a second.

“Lionel. She said he was busy in Europe for some business shit”. Zero couldn’t hide the resentment this simple fact was making him feel. When he looked up, Derek was staring at him with a blank expression on his face, before looking away.

“What the fuck is she doing?” he muttered to himself, slowly shaking his head in disbelief.

Zero’s eyes automatically narrowed. “What do you mean?”

Derek crossed his look with a considering expression. “Jude’s not going to swing by anytime soon, dude. But it’s not because he’s in a business meeting”. 

Zero’s heart was pounding and pounding, louder and louder. He could barely breathe at this point. Derek stopped himself, obviously trying to figure a way to keep going.

“Fucking spill it, I swear to God-“, Zero said, his voice as threatening as it could be.

“Jude's in jail.”

* * *

 

**Then, December 5th 2017**  

_The Devil Girls stroke the pose for a couple of more seconds after the music ended, enjoying the standing ovation of the crowd, before retreating from the stage with a salute as Lionel was replacing them. She had at least the decency to wear a black dress, Pete remarked, although no one in the Playground was really mourning Oscar Kinkade – far from it. Lionel’s crimson lips were curling into a proud grin, as someone handed her a micro. Standing with his drink, an elbow nonchalantly resting on the bar, he observed his ex-wife with a half-amused, half-concerned look. No one would be seriously thinking that she wasn’t a merry widow. She was literally exuding pride and confidence and she was exulting. He shook his head for himself. She really was a damn phoenix._

_“Since we are all gathered here today, friends, staff, co-workers, but most of all, members of the Devils Nation and the Devils family, I wanted to say a few words.” She marked a dramatic pause, which made Pete roll his eyes from the far spot where he was enjoying his ex-wife's speech._

_“The events of the last two years, inside of this Arena, had proved one thing: we never give up. The Devils Organization, the Devils Nation, is about to write a new chapter of its story, after the tragic loss of its owner, Oscar Kinkade. As his wife, this is my duty to make sure his legacy remains stronger than ever. As a result, a few changes will take place in the coming weeks within the Devils Family, to ensure the rehabilitation of the team as one of the leading in NBA.”_

_She marked another pause, and Pete realized that he was struck with expectation, just like everybody else, barely keeping his mouth shut as suspense and tension were filling the crowded place. God, she could be such a pain in the ass when she was doing her drama queen. Hopefully, the changes would have very little impact on his spot – or at least he hoped Lionel would have the decency to tell him beforehand – and he doubted that Sloane’s was at stake._

_“As much as the Devils Organization means and will always mean to me, I have decided that I would not assume the position left vacant by my late husband. I had my fair share in the business”, she added with a smile, which made people laugh in return. “As a result, I have decided to appoint my beloved stepson, Jude Kinkade, who unfortunately couldn’t make it in time for tonight’s event, as my proxy to run the Devils on my behalf. Family meant a lot to Oscar and this is my humble way to reward all his years of hard work.”_

_Pete chocked himself with his own saliva, not really knowing if Jude’s new promotion at the top tower or the last bit directed to Oscar was what caused him to strangle himself. When he eventually managed to breathe again after almost coughing a lung out, Lionel had already left the stage with an ovation from the crowd. While everyone was going back to their conversations and the music was turned on again, Pete threw himself in the crowd to track Lionel down. After a couple of minutes, and asking two or three people on the way, he spotted her in conversation with a member of the board, Travis Coolkidd, probably his wife, and a man in his forties that Lionel lightly introduced as “a philanthropist”._

_Pete gave them a reluctant smile and handshake before grabbing Lionel by her arm, muttering a “Can I talk to you in private?” to her ear._

_“You should start to behave a little better, Pete, this is the beginning of a New Era”, she said lightly after excusing herself._

_Pete shot her a ‘cut the crap’ look as they wound up in a more secluded space, at the opposite of the bar. “Jude? Owner of the Devils?”_

_Lionel smiled at several persons around them, replying between her teeth, as they were walking away. “Come on Pete, don’t tell me you’re still mad at him after all this time! You punched him, it’s over now.”_

_Pete’s eyes widened. She seriously couldn’t believe that his only motive was based on some words they had almost four years ago. The fact that she was herself able to hold grudges for decades didn’t mean that he was as revengeful as her._

_“It’s not even about that, for God’s sake! He’s not even 30! It’s a kid! Is that what you want for your New Era? Jude Kinkade?!”, he hissed, leaning closer to her._

_She sighed. “Really, Pete? So what, I should start to buy players only after they reached 30? You of all people should know that you can be a kid and still be better than anybody else.”_

_Pete was taken aback. “It’s not just about his age. It’s about everything else that comes with Jude. He was a good EVP, I give you that. But you shouldn’t mess too much with Oscar’s memory. It’s something to pretend that the family is reunited for the press and to take your revenge on him on stage. But putting Jude in his seat?! Do I have to remind you who fucking killed Oscar?”_

_Suddenly, Lionel had lost all her warmth, and she was looking at him with dead-cold eyes. “It was self-defence. Justice had been served. Don’t you dare bring that back. Ever again”._

_He looked helplessly around him, trying to figure the best way to make his point without earning him a punch – because right now, Lionel seemed pretty much ready to do so, and history had proven that she was a damn good puncher._

_“Are you sure about what you’re doing? Do you think he can handle it? With Zero and all?”, he insisted._

_Lionel threw her shoulders back and snorted. “Don’t you think the days where we were sure about anything are well behind us?”_


End file.
